no one to drive the car
Is this line intended to conclude the theme of the isolation of the lower class and their separation (as, for example, children of Caribbean immigrants) for their original culture?? There isn't anyone who can make use of the technology (the car) created by European/American culture because the poor immigrants and their children mentioned in the poem have not received any instruction of how to fully utilize it.
I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold
"I just called to say I love you... I just called to say how much I care..." Did Stevie Wonder and Lionel Ritchie inadvertently recreate the intended meaning of Williams poem? Williams seems to offer an apology, however, is he really bringing the experience of eating the plums into the reader's point of view by describing it??
from imaginations which have no peasant traditions to give them character
William Carlos Williams' parents were from the Caribbean, a culture that frequently resists European culture, elitism and ethnocentrism in favor of emphasizing their own traditions. Does this poem emphasize the "peasant" point of view and attempt to describe the lower classes loss of their original culture?
His Thesis, on the French Revolution, was noteworthy in college annals, not merely for its painstaking and voluminous accuracy, but for the fact that it was the dryest, deadest, most formal, and most orthodox screed ever written on the subject.
There are many interesting parallels to the actual causes of the French Revolution and the duality of the Freddie/Bill character. For example, Freddie is associated with ineffective leadership as he rides in a chauffeured carriage with his nobly stoic fiancée Catherine. The pair invoke the image of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. As Bill emerges at the story’s conclusion, he realizes his resentment of the exploiting elite classes and he joins Mary in her work to protect workers parallels the Enlightenment and equality ideas expressed in the political meetings of the Jacobians.
If design govern in a thing so small.
Like Levine, Frost seems to discuss the human assumption that nature is inherently good and evil. Does Frost intend to suggest that the white spider is as innocent as the white moth?
The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.
Frost uses the word "dark" for the second time. Does the second line suggest the responsibilities that rouse the poet from his brooding, the third line that he has a lot of work to accomplish before he can think of himself and his own comfort, and the fourth line that he must focus on accomplishing his responsibilities before the arrival of his death??
Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.
The intricate iambic rhyme invokes the very silence of the falling snowflakes! So lovely. "The darkest evening of the year" though, seems to signal a change in the poet's mood and the horse must shake him out of it. Does Frost intend to convey a feeling of isolation and a preoccupation with responsibilities ?
SEEDS in a dry pod
The poet has so much potential, but so little is realized??
Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens– But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof.
Is the poet petit because he attempts to create poetry, but nature (and Homer and Whitman) are far superior at it?
like mites in a quarrel
Does Masters intend to denigrate society or human activity with this comparison?
It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.
This is my favorite line in the piece. (It also reminds me of Steve Martin pretending to be Micheal Caine's brother Ruprecht in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.) This is the dividing line between John's rational and unsympathetic world (a world that values fresh air over the needs of the narrator for mental stimulation and a raison d'etre) and the narrator's ability to ignore its harmful effects. This line provides the reader with a valuable insight into the house's powerful effects on the isolated individual; it happened to the previous shut-in too... One cannot help but wonder how John could ignore the presence of those rings on the wall, the torn and smudged wallpaper? Does Gilman intend to reveal that John nudges the narrator toward mental deterioration?
I don’t like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings! but John would not hear of it.
The narrator doesn't like the room or she doesn't like her marriage, boring life and her husband? Does Gilman use the attractive room downstairs to signify the narrator's desire to associate with society?
The most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people.
The motif of the garden, rose borders and the arabesques of the wallpaper seem to serve as agents of separation (similar to DuBois' "veil"). Does Gilman intend to address the active role of women in society as necessary (rather than separated by home and domestication)?
In those sombre forests of his striving his own soul rose before him, and he saw himself,—darkly as through a veil; and yet he saw in himself some faint revelation of his power, of his mission.
Here DuBois seems to change his utilization of the veil theme from an agent of separation to a tool toward self reflection. Does DuBois suggest that the veil should be retained to protect the African-American identity in his pursuit of education and personal development?
the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
For DuBois, the theme of the veil is connected to the "double-consciousness". Does DuBois infer that the double-consciousness is damaging to African-American self-respect?
but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows. That sky was bluest when I could beat my mates at examination-time, or beat them at a foot-race, or even beat their stringy heads. Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine.
Is DuBois illustrating a perceived dichotomy of African American life with the theme of "the veil"? i.e. "the veil" separates the African American experience from Caucasian experience.
Indeed, few men of science measured force in any other way.
Such a strange amalgam of laments and voices of authority scotch-taped together. Does Adams reveal his structure for writing this piece with this statement (and is it really a qualified and factual one?) and the passage at the end about "modeling the plastic material..." His discussion seems to sidestep and pick up other tidbits rather then connect the idea of the machine age and religion/femaleness/creativity/humanity. Detour ahead, Adams' bridge is out.
house outside, the break of continuity amounted to abysmal fracture for a historian’s objects
Does Adams lament the so-called progress of innovation and technology or does he lament its depiction by the museum/exposition?
Adams haunted it, aching to absorb knowledge, and helpless to find it. He would have liked to know how much of it could have been grasped by the best-informed man in the world. While he
Adams writes of himself in the third person for his autobiography?? Does he do this to emphasize a feeling of alienation in the machine age??
from the purpos
In this second stanza, "from the purpose" seems to contradict what we know about nature. Decomposition of trees, fences, abandoned cars doesn't occur by virtue of the natural world's agenda, prejudice or favor. However, maybe we can use this to decipher the word choice "pig". If the poem is describing racial tension and unequal political and social power, then perhaps the poem is linking social cruelty to nature's cruelty?
From my car passing under the stars,
The first two stanzas utilize a lot of "out of" seemingly to describe a long-standing situation's causes. The third, forth and fifth stanzas are separated from the previous two with the description of nature and decomposition in order to suggest, perhaps, the futility of social interaction or at least looking for a logical explanation why social inequality exists. The fourth stanza seems to acknowledge brewing unrest (from "bow down" come "rise up"). However, "from my car passing under the stars" seems to suggest the poet's separation from the situation and an acknowledgment or declaration that he is just passing through life as an observer?
creosote
creosote- this word choice evokes a prehistoric sensibility just by the alliteration of the word. Creosote bushes live 80-100 years. Creosote is that sticky, stinky tar stuff that is carcinogenic and its use is now outlawed.<br> In this first stanza of the anaphora "they Lion grow", "creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies" seem to function as an ingredient list for a group's meager condition. These ingredients, however, are mostly very toxic. Other word choices in the stanza ("acids of rage, the candor of tar") seem to support the image of a hostile environment. Even "bearing butter" is a juxtaposition of machinery and sustenance. Is the poem describing segregation and/or racial exploitation?